DeepVerge upbeat on progress at Modern Water

(Sharecast News) - Environmental and life sciences artificial intelligence company DeepVerge said on Wednesday that, since the offer for the acquisition of Modern Water was completed on 17 November, contractual obligations had been signed for the production of water contamination equipment worth $5m (£3.6m) to meet its obligations with distributors and customers.
The AIM-traded firm said that notably, 80% of the equipment being produced was earmarked for the Chinese market, where further assembly and localisation would be carried out.

It said the orders were expected to be delivered during the current financial year ending 31 December.

Instruments from across the range of 'Microtox' and 'Microtrace' were being manufactured, with upgrades to the software allowing optimised collection and organisation of data for real time surveillance.

Screens had also been upgraded with Chinese interfaces across the range of Modern Water's benchtop lab equipment.

In February, more than 100 of the Microtox benchtop and mobile instruments were completing production for immediate delivery, while 40 handheld trace metal detector PDVs had been manufactured to meet immediate obligations, with a "significant" upgrade design underway on a further 100 units to be produced.

Online monitors worth around $50,000 from the Microtox CTM toxicity range and the Microtrace metal OVA range were being produced across two sites, with 40 units scheduled for final assembly at the company's facilities in Shanghai in March.

Additionally, eight Modern Water Microtrace OVA units were being retrofitted with the MicrotoxPD realtime optofluidic Covid-19 detection system for wastewater.

An upgrade to the Modern Water reagent production line in York was being completed with the installation of an HS-2 freeze drying lyophilizer from Frozen in Time.

The board said that would streamline downstream processing, automate quality control, and improve volume output of the recurring revenue consumables used by most of the Modern Water range of equipment.

Microsaic's in-line bio-processing monitoring unit, announced on 15 February, would "fully automate" the upstream quality control system, removing all manual testing requirements.

The second phase of the company's manufacturing plan was being implemented to increase manufacturing capacity in China in the second quarter, to double current capacity by year-end.

"Following our acquisition of Modern Water, ongoing investment is focused on creating optimised, miniaturised and more cost effective instruments that collect data efficiently to be processed using our artificial intelligence models to deliver more detailed results faster," said DeepVerge chief executive officer Gerard Brandon.

"This enables water pollution to be detected, and when combined with external weather data, the prediction of pollution, and therefore pollution control is made possible."

Brandon said the software in each unit had undergone "substantial upgrades" to enhance the user experience of Microtox and Microtrace instruments.

"Automatic detection and identification of Modern Water's reagents by our equipment ensures optimal monitoring as our tests are a regulated benchmark and, importantly for the company, generating recurring income from these consumables."

At 1503 GMT, shares in DeepVerge were up 6.86% at 31.95p.